Joy Behar, I suspect, knows little to nothing about ‘the barrio’ as she is not even close to being Spanish-American. She is Italian-American in ancestry.

No barrios, (added) at least in the American sense of the word.

Strange comment.

Here’s the quote:

She’s not in a barrio anymore, she’s on the set of the view.

Please correct me if I misheard.

(I even googled ‘Obario’ and ‘Abario’ just to be sure)

(adding) Nevertheless, to even bring that up! Behar is an educated woman who likely did NOT grow up in the ‘barrio’ and to use that word is SO silly. She may have a gut punch sense of humor, but she ain’t ‘ghetto’ if you will. That seems absurd.

“And now they have used an honest statement of feeling as the basis for a charge of bigotry to create a basis for firing me. Well, now that I no longer work for NPR let me give you my opinion. This is an outrageous violation of journalistic standards and ethics by management that has no use for a diversity of opinion, ideas or a diversity of staff (I was the only black male on the air).”

TOTAL BALONEY!

Not only is he not the only black male on the air, he is not the only black PERSON on the air. That’s absurd. In fact, if you look at the on air bios, it appears to be a pretty proportionate group to the United States, and has of people with an abundance of women, in fact.

Here’s some black on air personalities:

Korva Coleman

Audie Cornish

Cheryl Corley

Vertamae Grosvenor

Danyell Irby

Allison Keyes

Al Letson

John Murph

Ofeibea Quist-Arcton

Shay Stevens

Gwen Thompkins

Glynn Washington

Cornel West

Nancy Wilson

Each of these people appears to be black, but ‘I don’t see color’ (Colbert). And, several of them are men.

So, I guess because black men were not in the studio when Juan Cole was, there aren’t any? If a tree falls in the forest I suppose …

Edited to add: Never would I say that there couldn’t be MORE diversity in on-air reporting in teevee and radio, but I’m just saying Juan is wrong.

To redeem myself from a post you no longer see here on Daily Dose, it seems important to note that incidents of firefighters being forced to watch homes burn to the ground because either folks didn’t get out and vote or they genuinely thought it was a good idea to not have publicly funded resources.

In Bozeman, Montana a man did not pay a $100 fee in 1979 and watched his house burn to the ground – it was the second time in three months for the town. The newspaper account said the man learned of his house burning down from the newspaper. It went on to say that the owner of the home was bitter and that they should have billed him, but that also fewer than half of the town was signed up for the program.

And, with each town’s and state’s rules being different, the other family whose house burned didn’t even know about the law.

Perhaps, in cases like this, there needs to be a newsletter sent out for each obscure, odd, and – in this case – damaging and heartbreaking – law.

As a young Transsexual woman, I’ve experienced what it’s like being “outted” to people in a way that doesn’t feel comfortable or safe. I’ve been bullied, sworn at, assaulted, lied to and ridiculed by others, purely because I’m supposedly something “different” to what they are used to. It’s not a pleasant feeling having somebody take control of your life in some way shape or form, and use it against you in order to suit their own ends.

James Massola has argued throughout the week since Gamut was “outted” that he did so with the interests of the public in mind. With arguments ranging from “the public should know when a public servant is biased”, through to “Grog put himself in this position”, James Massola has been gently stoking the flames within the volunteer and academic media, in order to promote the circulation of his own work online. That’s typical of most print journalists within the political confines of Canberra, as the more hits your stories are getting, either online or otherwise, the safer your job becomes.

James Massola has been claiming that going after Grogs Gamut hasn’t been about getting revenge on a critic whatsoever. If you believe that line, then I’ve got a Pelican for sale that knows how to tap-dance as well. By it’s very nature, the Canberra Press Gallery is a conservative institution. Unlike many other parts of the media industry, change isn’t welcome to many of those who have clawed their way from obscurity into the nation’s limelight. Nor is criticism, especially when it’s constructive.

Ontop of that, James Massola would have had to of known that Grogs Gamut was invited to the Media 140 conference by it’s Australian convenor, Julie Posetti. Possessing one of the finest journalistic and academic minds around, Julie is nobody’s fool when it comes to anything of a political or media nature. If anyone were able to verify whether somebody has a political agenda or not, it would be a prominent Journalist, who just also happens to teach Journalism students for a living.

While Massola was well within his rights to “out” Grogs Gamut, was it the morally right thing to do so? Grog hasn’t lost his job (yet), so no harm done, right? It’s cavalier attitudes like this that either get people hurt, or end careers. In more than a few situations, it’s resulted in both. What would have happened if Grog had of lost his job over this? If you look through his entire blog, Grog has been meticulous in making sure that he only blogs on issues that are already in the public arena, and never on anything that could possibly come across his desk at work.

What’s surprising is that no one with a Blogging background was included as a part of this broadcast, even though the topic was “Blogging” itself. While some might argue that Massola’s background with the pro-Catholic “Eureka Street” during his early career might qualify him as a blogger, there’s a difference between “writing for work” like journalists do, and “writing for fun”.

That in itself raises a question: why did James Massola and Geoff Elliot choose Latika M. Bourke to be a part of that interview? As many of you (from Australia that is) are aware Latika Bourke is employed by 2UE, which is owned by Fairfax. Fairfax owns both “The Sydney Morning Herald” and “The Age”, which are in direct competition with “The Australian”. Given that News Corporation have their own journalists who have just as much experience in Canberra as Latika (some of whom are also more experienced in social media), it’s surprising that she was called in for this “interview”.

Now if you listen closely to the recording, nearly every time James Massola said something Latika Bourke was in complete agreement. Now nothing against Latika Bourke, as I think that she’s one of the smartest young journalists to have covered Canberra in a long, long time, though something stinks about this. Latika Bourke is normally rather blunt with both her questions and her answers, so seeing her act pretty much as a “yes-man” to everything that Geoff Elliot and James Massola were saying is just plain weird.

Massola then proceeded to state that I’d missed the point and that he’d praised Grogs Gamut during the early part of the campaign. While that much certainly is true (the praise), it doesn’t explain why he suddenly thought that Grogs Gamut was instantly newsworthy now. Media 140 is predominantly an education-orientated organization, rather than a professional one in the sense of the National Press Club. The conference run by Julie Posetti was designed to benefit both professional journalists and bloggers alike, regardless of politics. In that regard, Grogs Gamut had as much of a right to attend Media 140 as anyone else, particularly given the apolitical insight that he gave on the coverage of the 2010 election. If “outting” Grogs Gamut’s identity wasn’t newsworthy at the time of the election, then it can only come across as an act of spite by “The Australian” now.

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Kate Doak is a Postgraduate student at the University of New England, Australia. Since 2004 she’s changed career paths twice, genders once and has developed a major interest in radio. These days, Kate mostly focuses on Modern History and International Politics.